Oh, I haven't heard of any Verizon customer re-programming his router.

Oh, that must mean it never happens. Good point.

Have you seen that done? It must be extremely rare, if it happens at all.
Who would ever want to do such a thing?

That seems kind of useless anyway.

The point of Free Software is for users to have the freedom to run,
read, modify, and share the code. It is up to the users to decide
if they want to do any of those things, but the important thing is
for it not to be denied them if they do want it.

The practical matter is that there are so very few such users and those
users are probably mentally deranged anyway. It would be a kindness to keep
them from such useless activities.

This may not be a goal that you share, and if so, when a router
manufacturer decides to use your software rather than BusyBox, they
will have to meet your conditions for distribution. Meanwhile, they
have to meet BusyBox's terms.

I cannot conceive of anyone wanting to create lightweight Linux utilities in
this day and age. Certainly not myself and so that scenario could never
occur.

> Why bother with some second hand version from Verizon anyway
The distributor of the software must make the source properly
available under the GPL so that users are able to deal with the
exact version of the code they are receiving. And because the
license says so.

"Just because!" Sounds like a small child with no real answer.

> Seems like a stupid tactic.
Not when the goal is to give users the freedom to run, read, modify,
and share the code they receive. It may be stupid in furtherance of
other goals, and so people who have those other goals will not use
that tactic. But that's not the FSF or the SFLC or the authors of
BusyBox.

Well at least we can define the FSF and SFLC as stupid. That is a
beginning.